The Sydney Opera House is a symbol of Australia and all of its’ cultural diversity.
But as it turns out, what actually goes on behind goes doors, allegedly doesn’t (or hasn’t) quite been lining up to that in all its entirety. As reported by ABC News, a group of people who used to work at the Sydney Opera House have issued a statement, which calls on management’s need to address the systemic racism, which say is engrained in the facility’s structure.
The group claim that the Opera House is a “culturally unsafe and unequal workplace” and that security “racially profiled members of the public”, and also that there was a “lack of culturally diverse staff in leadership positions.”
While it is unclear why a letter from past workers needs to be written for shocking things like this to even be properly brought to light, at least now they are starting to shape up.
Sydney Opera House chief executive Louise Herron stated, “It is very important that we understand how systemic racism is manifested here and what we need to do to overcome it.”
Herron was asked on how she though systemic racism had found itself breeding inside of the Opera House and she said, “I was reflecting the words that were written in the statement. This is an area of deep feeling and if some people feel that there is systemic racism then it is something that we must root out.”
“It’s certainly nothing conscious, and certainly all we’re doing … is to ensure that there is not systemic racism at the Opera House.”
While the systemic racism at the Opera House is a larger issue, specific events have been pinpointed. In particular, a black face moment which was handled extremely poorly – where an attendee at a staff trivia night dressed up as Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction, seeing him paint his face brown.
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